R&F Encaustic at Penland School of Craft with guest blogger Julie Snidle
May 23 - June 4th, 2021. This two-week block of time had been on my calendar for twelve months as I prepared and anticipated teaching at Penland for the first time. Although Penland was closed for about a year during the pandemic, it continued to offer on-line programming. Then, in May 2021 Penland was thrilled to welcome back its in-person workshops, including the one I was offering in encaustic and mixed media.
Penland School of Craft was established in 1929 and is an international center for craft education located in the mountains of North Carolina about an hour north of Asheville. Renowned for its rich history, Penland offers students the opportunity to engage their hands and mind in a creative community of fellow learners.
I arrived on a Sunday morning and was scheduled to meet my students at 5:00pm that evening. This gave me plenty of time to find my housing quarters and locate my teaching studio. Tom Condon, Penland’s Coordinator for the Painting and Drawing Studio assisted me in setting up the space.
The classroom was magnificent! Spacious, well-ventilated, well-lit and comfortable. Twelve students would typically occupy this space but times were different now. So six students and I found ourselves engaging with each other during a two-week encaustic painting and bonding experience.
When I was approached about teaching at Penland, my first thought was "Yikes! How do I stretch a typical weekend workshop into two full weeks?" With Encaustic and Mixed Media as my focus, the solutions came as I divided the workshop into the topics I wanted to cover and then planned daily demonstrations and exercises to meet those goals.
One obvious difference with a longer workshop was the luxury of more time in the studio. Here students could not only try what they had learned and get comfortable with the materials, but they could also push themselves further. At Penland the studios are open 24-7.
The studio lit up at night while students worked in open studio.
I was a teacher before I was an artist. It's my nature to be organized and anticipate problems before they arise. When teaching a workshop, I try to find a balance between giving students the necessary information they need and the freedom to explore the materials for themselves.
Upon meeting my students for the first time on Sunday evening I had an exercise for them. Since they had all arrived from different locations, I asked them to visually describe the route they took to get to Penland using only charcoal on paper. These drawings were later used as transfers onto their encaustic paintings.
One day we hiked some of Penland's beautiful nature trails together. With our cameras and/or sketchbooks in hand, we captured inspirational lines, shapes, and colors to take back to our work.
Encaustic was a brand new medium for most of my students. Their backgrounds varied from printmaking and pottery to interior design. The quality of their work was impressive. Juan chose to work in a series based on an antique book that Rosemary brought to class which focused on Pompeii; a paradise lost. MJ used ethereal photography as her muse while Caroline's love of collage and a summer palette created work that everyone wanted to own. Rosemary, who has been to Penland a dozen times before, integrated her beautiful handmade papers into her paintings and Tony's warm personality was captured in everything he created. Dejah sold five of her small pieces to a Penland instructor.
Penland usually offers as many as fourteen different workshops during a session; however things were scaled back by half this summer due to the pandemic. Large group events were done a bit differently. Instead of Show & Tell, all attendees were invited to stroll through the various studios with masks on, to see what others had created on the last evening of our two-week session. The Instructors' Slide Presentations were linked temporarily to YouTube for online viewing.
The food at Penland alone is worth the trip! Fresh, delicious, and with dietary options galore, we enjoyed our meals outdoors under the big white tent. Did I mention the coffee shop?! Or the Penland Art Gallery! There was so much to enjoy and be inspired by.
The painting shown in the photo above was a collaboration that we all worked on for fun and as a memory of our time together.
One of the things I most enjoy about teaching is getting to know my students so that I can cater to their needs and address their particular questions and concerns. I was blessed to have this marvelous group for this special workshop. Ranging in ages from 20 to 74 and coming from Miami and St. Paul and places in between, we all had one thing in common - loving and creating art. We hiked and ate meals together and painted alongside one another long after class had ended. One generous student purchased and donated four additional R&F 16” x 16” heated palettes for future Penland students and teachers to enjoy. These students created a total of 128 paintings in the ten days of our workshop.
I know I've had a successful workshop when students don't want it to end or can't wait to get home and set up their studios. I would like to thank R&F Handmade Paints and Ampersand Art Supply for their generous support. It is an honor and always my pleasure to introduce students to these high quality art materials.